Two-In, Two-Out
by RowenaR
Summary: Firefighter!AU, because I haven't written one before and felt like it. #4 It's a cold February night in Milwaukee for Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman. Time for some hard truths.
1. I've Tried So Hard, Baby

**A/N: **Righty-o, firefighter!AU. I'm blaming this one on Chicago Fire and **sgteam14283** who made me watch it. It gave me major headaches (also, it's going to be a trilogy and I nearly called the series Mustard Yellow because I'm unoriginal as fuck...) and I'm still not sure about it but I do like it for some reason. Hope you do, too? Also, thanks to my Tumblr followers who helped find a city to base this in and to **anuna_81** for sharing my love for Bruce Springsteen :D

Also, as I just realized, big fat language warning. Firefighter!Evan apparently has an even filthier mouth than the version of him I usually write.

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**I've Tried So Hard, Baby**

"_Well I've tried so hard baby  
But I just can't see  
What a woman like you  
Is doing with me  
So tell me who I see  
When I look in your eyes  
Is that you baby  
Or just a brilliant disguise."_

_Bruce Springsteen, "Brilliant Disguise"_

Here they are again. Funny how that always works. Just last week, it had been Dex narrowly escaping the wrong end of a wood cutter and getting socked in the eye by a jealous husband in the process. Don't ask about that, just remember that it got him a nice trip to the ER because Keller can convince even Teyla Emmagan when she gets really overprotective of her guys.

Here they are again. ICU, this time, and he still doesn't really know how it happened. Something with Dex sending Cadman into a near zero visibility zone for primary search – goddammit, she hasn't been on the squad for a full year, he could have _told_ Dex that making her take point would end badly – and Cadman nearly buying it in the line of duty. It's not like he cares about it, anyway.

So yeah, 'course he cares about fellow firefighters, and he kinda cares about Cadman and let's face it, that's kinda the entire problem. So he's just here because everyone else is, of course he's just here because the rest of the house is, too, because that's what firefighters do when one of their own ends up in the ICU. They congregate outside the room, as if their presence would make any change in the final outcome. Firefighters really are a bunch of superstitious assholes, when it comes down to it. It's what they do. It's got nothing to do with the fact that Cadman's his ex of seven months.

Nothing do with the fact that they called it quits shortly after her candidacy ended, nothing to do with the fact that he still is a bit fuzzy on _why the hell_ she ended their thing in the first place, nothing to do with the fact that it still hurts like the devil every time he looks at her.

Nothing to do with the fact that hearing her scream over the radio and then nothing but the roaring of the fire and the crackling of the walls burning down and the hard breathing of firefighters doing their job took off ten years of his already statistically short lifespan.

Goddammit, for some reason, it takes all the energy that the fire didn't eat up to just stand there, hands in the pockets of his filthy turnout pants, ignore the itching and the stench of the sweaty station uniform shirt sticking to his skin and stare right through the window to Cadman's room. Ignore the wide berth they're all giving him, that even Sheppard, his captain, is giving him. As if there's something between Cadman and him that would warrant respectful distance.

As if he still had the energy to piss at anyone dumb enough to address him, anyway.

He's thought about it, as they raced to the hospital directly after the incident. He's thought about grabbing the front of Dex's turnout coat and shoving him into the nearest wall. He's thought about it long and hard, savored every little bit of it, fantasized about how it would feel to give the Rescue Squad LT a piece of his mind about sending the youngest, most inexperienced member of the squad headfirst into a fire like that, with black, greasy smoke billowing out of every hole in the goddamn building and the flames eating up walls and floors faster than they could spell "flashover". Even entertained the notion of ripping Dex a new one with his bare hands for a few minutes.

Then again, Dex used to be an Army Ranger, is a head taller than him and packs about twice as much as he does in the weight room. Shoving that guy into the wall for a perfectly good decision would be suicide, and he might run into fires to rescue total strangers for a living but he isn't _stupid_.

'Sides, Dex and the squad got her out just before the house collapsed, and hitting the guy who just rescued your ex-girlfriend that you don't care about any more than about other firefighters is just really bad form.

So. Why is he still standing outside her room and feeling like a knife is slowly twisted around in his guts every time he sees the bandage around her head and the breathing tubes in her nose and the leg hanging a few inches off her bed in suspension, then?

He's still standing there, wrecking his head about that damn question when he hears the squeaky treat of rubber soles on hospital linoleum coming closer and he nearly expects to see Dex or his boss coming up next to him but the footsteps aren't heavy enough for that and he kind of has a hard time not breaking out of the impassive staring he has adopted ever since coming here an hour ago. Better not move. Better not make them all eye him even closer than they're probably already doing. Better… "You know, you can totally go in there."

Ah. Jennifer Keller. He doesn't look at her. "Whoever said I wanted to?"

"Whoever said I was talking specifically to _you_?" _Dammit_.

She got him. _Again_. Fucking Jennifer Keller with her early twenties innocence and her deceiving lack of practical life skills. She's been on their watch for almost two years, killing time before she can finally scrounge up enough money to go to med school, and yet he still hasn't learned his lesson about not underestimating her. He resists heaving a sigh and manages to keep staring into Cadman's room. "What do you want, Jennifer?"

It sounded too weary, too tired for his liking but then again, they're all on the tail end of a busy forty-eight-hour shift full of idiots ramming perfectly good knives into their perfectly good hands and setting their perfectly good living rooms on fire with cheap table fireplace knockoffs. Probably explains that hard look he just saw Dex throwing him in the corner of his eyes.

Keller doesn't have his inhibitions about sighing. "Teyla and I just came across the surgeon who worked on her." Right. The surgeon who won't tell any of them what _exactly_ is wrong with her because none of them are next of kin. Must be a new kid, or he'd know that for a firefighter there's no closer kin than the one they ride with every damn shift. Kinda figures that he'd tell Keller and Emmagan, though. "She's stable, just needs to keep being monitored for smoke inhalation and that gash on her head for a while. Leg's gonna need some time mending but she'll most likely be able to get back on the job in a couple weeks, maybe months."

Well. "She's gonna hate it." He hadn't meant to say that aloud. He hadn't meant to do a great many things today. Must be one of those days.

"Of course she is." Pretty sure Keller just rolled her eyes in that "well, d'uh" motion she must have picked up from Cadman. Being the only three women in the house and none of them natives to Milwaukee, the three of them formed an almost instant friendship, completely different personalities and tempers notwithstanding. Generally, he thinks that's a good thing but sometimes, he gets just so fucking jealous of that easy, uncomplicated friendship she shares with the paramedics. Also, sometimes it's just a really big fucking pain in the ass, too.

Especially when he can hear a second pair of work boots squeak on the linoleum, steps too quiet to be any of the guys. Of all three women, he has known Teyla longest. Coming to their house six years ago, a registered nurse having switched to emergency medical services after cutbacks all around the city's hospitals, she'd been the only woman working there for four years until Keller and Cadman had arrived there fairly close together. If she's coming up because she has decided to weigh in, too, he's done for.

"Have you told him yet that he's being ridiculous, Jennifer?" Yep. Done for. Sure as death.

"I was just getting to that." Right here. He's standing _right here_.

"You're being ridiculous, Air Force." Ah. Is that where they're at now? Teyla, she rarely calls him any of the nicknames related to his career before joining the Milwaukee Fire Department eight years ago, rarely calls him _any_ nicknames. When she does, it's the equivalent to your parents calling you by your full name, middle names and all. When she does, it means she thinks you royally fucked up. Or are being an idiot. She's usually right.

Doesn't mean she's right _now_. "Just cut to the chase and get it over with, whatever you think you have to tell me." Either that or just leave this to Sheppard. At least his captain would simply crash his hand down on his shoulder, tell him the truck still needs to be hosed down and put to bed and he'd be absolutely right to do that.

Which begs the question: _why_ hasn't Sheppard done that yet?

"Jesus, just quit with the moping and get in that fucking room, Lorne." Ah. And that answers _that_ question. Are they _all_ just standing here, silently watching him making an idiot out of himself with sulking in front of his ex-girlfriend's hospital room? Bunch of assholes he works with, he swears to God.

"Yes, quit with the moping and get into that fucking room, Lorne," Keller unnecessarily repeats in a voice sounding eerily like Cadman's when she's mocking him and then slaps something against his chest.

Something looking suspiciously like surgical gloves, the kind paramedics use. Damn, he shouldn't have reacted, shouldn't have looked down.

Because now the only choice he has left is turn towards Keller and frown at her. "The hell's that supposed to mean?"

She shrugs. "Laura's got some par for the course first and second degree burns on her hands and arms. Just being careful is all."

I sure as hell _ain't touching my ex-girlfriend_, is the first thing he wants to throw at her, _not after everything. Not after she dumped me, spouting some gibberish about how she can't do that whole "don't let yourself care about anyone" stuff and that "don't let it get to you" thing anymore_ but then again. Then again he _cares._

He goddamn _cares_ and it's tearing him up inside. He was the one teaching her first about always keeping your distance to the victims, about never letting yourself care too much about them or about what you do for a living or how it might kill you right your next shift. He was the one teaching her first about that because he was the first one to realize how deeply Laura Cadman felt, how she didn't only wear her heart on her sleeve, how her heart was also bigger than is strictly good for a firefighter. He was the first one to teach her about that because she reminded him of herself when she came to the station after the academy.

When she first came to them, fresh from the Fire Academy, she'd already had six years as a US Marine under her belt, including one deployment to Iraq and one to Afghanistan, respectively. She'd soaked up everything Dex and he and their crews taught her, like a sponge, and she'd bullied Jennifer into learning how to cook, sharing newbie duties with her, and she'd silently sobbed under her covers in the dorm after they lost their first child in two years four months into her candidacy.

At first he'd thought she was just sleeping it off but then he'd seen the telltale shaking shoulders and he probably should have left her alone that night because if he had, he'd never have walked over and he'd never have gently touched her shoulder and he'd never have talked to her about loss and detachment and avoiding getting burned out at thirty from all the emotional strain the job brought with it. If he had left her alone that evening, maybe he'd never have realized how he still found her hot with her hair streaked with so much soot that nothing of it strawberry blonde color remained and her face nearly unrecognizable under layers of ash and dust and sweat. How his heart kept lurching into his throat every time Dex ordered her to accompany him or someone from his crew into a burning building. How he couldn't imagine the common room without her running commentary on the war flick of the day and her full laughter drifting over from the girls table she and the paramedics had appropriated anymore.

How desperately he wanted to kiss her every time he came across her in the hallway or push her right back into the shower when he saw her coming out of them with her hair still wet or sit down on the couch and bury his face in the crook of her neck and feel the comforting rhythm of her pulse after a particularly harrowing call.

Man, sure would have saved him a lot of heartbreak if he'd never decided to give her the lesson about detachment he wished someone would have given him so many years ago.

And he _still_ cares, despite everything he taught her, everything he thought he'd learned in fifteen years of fighting fires, first in the Air Force, then in Milwaukee. Despite everything she threw at him when she dumped him. Despite how utterly humiliated and confused he'd felt after she was done with him. He _still fucking cares_, and he'll never stop caring. Not about her.

Without another word, he snatches the gloves out of Keller's hands and marches over towards Cadman's… _Laura's_ room. Doing his best not to look back – lest he'd find himself scowling at anyone daring to give him a "told you so" face – he uses his foot to close the door, dissatisfied that it's still standing a bit ajar but too determined to rectify it at the moment. He's got better things to do.

He's not quite sure _what_ it is, though, so for a moment he's standing in front of her bed, at her right side, completely at a loss for words. For a moment, it's eerily quiet in the room, just the steady, kind of muted sound of a heart monitor disturbing it in regular intervals and… is that really "Tougher Than The Rest" drifting in through the crack of the slightly open door?

It nearly makes him laugh, how that's possibly the worst and best song Fate could have chosen to have the radio in the nurses' room across the hall play. "So somebody ran out, leaving somebody's heart in a mess," his _ass_. "Well, if you're looking for love, honey, I'm tougher than the rest," for _sure_.

He cracks a grin, in the end. Good old Boss, he thinks, making a mess of things by getting it so damn right. Tougher than the rest. That's what he thought he was. Right up until that red-haired slip of a woman came up and broke his heart. Keeps breaking it because he still hasn't learned his lesson, still hasn't learned that he isn't half as tough as he'd like to be. He snorts.

She stirs.

Huh. What. He blinks, takes a closer look, absentmindedly pulling on the gloves Keller gave him. She was right, there really are bandages on Laura's hands and wrists but from the look of it, it's just the usual mess of small burns that are characteristic for firefighters. She'll probably have a scar or two, nicely visible whenever she'll opt for short sleeves. Nothing to be ashamed of, and he knows she won't be. She's that kind of person. He loves that about her.

"Hey, Blues." Okay. He wasn't prepared for _that_. He thought he was, seeing as she just stirred a little prior to speaking but he really wasn't. Mostly, it's the nickname, he thinks. The one only she used, back when they were increasingly spending time off duty with each other and fell asleep on each other's couches watching Sox games and well, that one time they totally _didn't_ sleep in the back of the ambo Keller let them have.

He swallows. "Hey, Mo." Stupid, he thinks, _stupid_. He pinned that one on her, a couple weeks she came to the fire house. Someone started calling her Molly Marine, to see how long it would take her short fuse to blow up over that but it somehow stuck and he was the first one to abbreviate it to a simple Mo, and he only stopped calling her that when she broke up with him. He _missed_ calling her that. Stupid to show her that and sound like the pining ex-boyfriend he is, really. Then again, she did start it.

"Missed you hear me call that." So. Of all the things she could _possibly_ have said, _that's_ the one she goes for? Well.

At least he can keep himself from telling her that maybe then she shouldn't have _dumped_ him because honestly, he's not _that_ much of an asshole. Unfortunately, that somehow leaves him without one of those snarky replies he kind of became renowned for. She never had that effect on him before and he attributes those new developments to the fact that she still looks pretty much banged up, which is doing all kinds of nasty things to his heart.

He takes a deep breath, rubbing a hand over his face and realizing too late that that just rendered the surgical gloves he's wearing useless. Also, he really needs a fucking shower, if that one motion leaves his palm streaked heavily with black. "Look, Laura, I just…" He's pretty sure that if she weren't wearing a bandage around her head and if she weren't doped up with painkillers like she must be now she'd definitely raise her eyebrows inquisitively and just a little bit mockingly and he's glad that she doesn't do that now. He's not sure if he'd had the courage and the stupidity to say what he's going to say now, if she had. "You just… scared the living daylights out of me. I know you're an ex-Marine and everything but…"

"No such thing as an ex-Marine, Blues. Remember how I told you that a thousand times?" He expects her to throw him one of those looks, all hard eyes and impatience, the looks she gives people asking her whether she's tired of making coffee all day for real firefighters yet and people who accuse her of having made up her service with the Marines to get attention. But all she does is give him a small, tired smile.

It takes him a minute or two to realize that she wasn't just telling him off for making the same damn mistake for the hundredth time. She was also essentially saving himself for having to embarrass himself in front of her by keeping him from saying something he might regret later. For making an idiot out of himself by telling her just how _much_ he cares about her. He kind of wishes she wouldn't have done that, even though he appreciates the sentiment.

"Yeah," he says, trying to mirror her smile, "I do. Every single time."

Amazingly, he manages to make her laugh, just a low, husky sound interrupted by coughing and he's so sorry about causing her distress that he moves immediately to apologize. She's having none of it. "So what's with everyone standing around looking like someone died out there?"

Right. So she isn't ready to discuss the fact that _he_'s not out there but in here. Quite frankly, he isn't, either, so he can play along to her tune just fine. "Don't know. Wanna ask them?"

She grins, apparently knowing full well what game they're playing here, being drugged up to her collar notwithstanding. "Sure."

Maybe that isn't how he'd hoped this little encounter would turn out but then again, it still turned out better than anything he could hope for only ten minutes ago so he lets it slide, steps away from her to open that door and gesturing for the rest to come in. They eagerly accept, Keller being the first one to enter, even before Dex, giving Laura a mock berating clearly aimed at masking how worried Keller was for her friend. Keller, of course, fails spectacularly and Laura doesn't seem to mind.

After that, it's the rest of them. Dex giving her some gruff advice at maybe trying to stay away from unstable structure next time he sends her in point and Teyla promising to use her hospital contacts to get her released as soon as possible and everyone being relieved and joking around while he stays at the door, crossing his arms and leaning back, just happy to observe. It's only when their eyes meet through the throng of people milling around her bed and he catches her smiling at him again, tired and small and happy that he can't help wishing they were alone and not separated and he could freely give her that kiss on the forehead to tell her everything will be alright that he's honestly been wanting to give her ever since they arrived here.

As it is, he'll have to contend himself with what they have, even if it's just the scrap of a question where everything important went unsaid but he can work with that. It's better than what they had in the entire seven months since she dumped him – awkward encounters and avoidance and heartbreak all over the place – and maybe, just _maybe_ it's a fresh start, after all. And really, that's all he needs, and he kind of hopes that all _she_ needs, all _they_ need, too. Maybe, in the end, in some way, they _are_ tougher than the rest, just not in the way he always thought. It's a nice sentiment, that. He smiles. Can only get better now, can't it?


	2. Badlands Start Treating Us Good

**A/N: **So, second installment, this time with added seriously frustrated Laura Cadman. Yay! I hope you like it?

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**Badlands Start Treating Us Good**

"_Badlands, you gotta live it every day,  
Let the broken hearts stand  
As the price you've gotta pay,  
We'll keep pushin' till it's understood,  
and these badlands start treating us good."_

_Bruce Springsteen, "Badlands"_

Technically, she shouldn't be here. She's still on sick leave, even though she nearly _begged_ the docs to at least let her go on light duty but apparently something as trivial as a compound fracture gets to keep you from doing your job far too long to be necessary around here. She'd love to say that it wasn't like that in Corps but yeah, she'd be lying, and good Marines don't lie.

So, anyway, _technically_ she shouldn't be here but her physical therapist told her she needs to put some muscle back on that leg and the fire house has such a nicely furnished weight room and, quite frankly none of the creepy guys giving her unambiguously creepy looks as the local gym around her corner. So, okay, it does have Evan Lorne, but he's not creepy. In fact, he's intelligent, hard-working and in possession of a very sexy sense of dry, witty humor. Pretty good catch, actually. Unfortunately, he's also a constant reminder at how much she fails at basically everything in her life that's related to emotions.

Huffing, she puts another set of weights on the machine before she sits down to start pushing it up with her legs. It's been four weeks since they released her from the hospital and she's been working almost every day to get back into shape and she _still_ can't push as much as she used to. She's _never_ gonna get back on the squad if she doesn't manage to measure up soon.

Aw, shit, shit, shit, that fucking leg still _hurts_, goddammit.

Another frustrated huff escapes her, sounding too close for comfort like a fucking _sob_. This is bad, so _fucking_ bad. She was _just_ about to move on from rope rescue – "Well, you _are_ the lightest among us, Molly Marine!" – to closed space rescue, _just_ about to add another notch on her HURT squadron stick, on the way towards becoming a full-fledged rescue squad member, and then she took _one_ false step and suddenly she can't even do her usual ten-miler or push some weights without wanting to cry from pain and frustration. It's _just_ not fucking _fair_.

But then again, as a wise man once wrote, life isn't fair, it's just fairer than… "Ah, figures."

What the… Okay, play it cool, play it smooth. She dumped him and there'd been months of awkward encounters and uncomfortable silence between them but ever since he was the first person she saw after waking up from surgery after the accident that nearly killed her, things somehow became a little easier. She gives him a slightly annoyed look. "_What_ figures?"

She can _see_ how much he wants to say something like "Shouldn't that be "what figures, _Lieutenant_"?" but yeah, just because things are slowly starting to get better doesn't mean they don't still keep pussyfooting around each other. So in the end, he leaves it at, "That you'd be in here. Only firefighter in the house who'd be blasting Springsteen for a workout."

Pfft. So she likes the Boss. So what. He _knew_ that about her. 'Sides, "Death To My Hometown" pretty much fits her current mood in its angry, accusatory tone. And it's just plain impossible to sit still while listening to it. Over and over and _over_ again.

Okay. _Maybe_ she shouldn't have pushed up the volume _that_ much. She rolls her eyes. "Got a problem with that, _Lieutenant_?"

Shit. That _definitely_ wasn't the right tone to use, judging from the way he clenches his jaw. One, two… "Nah." Oh. Huh. That _wasn't_ the reaction she expected. "But I'm sure there isn't just that one song worth listening to."

Damn, he's right. Of _course_ he's right. She lets off the lifting and allows herself to rest a moment, desperate not to look as if she needs it. "Look, I'm sorry…"

"'S okay, Laura, don't worry." There shouldn't be that undercurrent of hurt and loss in those words. Or rather, she shouldn't be able to hear it, even over Springsteen blasting out his anger at towns being destroyed by ruthless Big Business to the world. "Not like it's a _bad_ song, after all." There. That's better. Bit of casual mocking, bit of dry humor. Even a wink. That's the Evan Lorne she knows, the one she couldn't get into bed with fast enough, even though she was a candidate fresh out of the Academy, and he was almost an instructor of hers.

She tries to grin back, be the too cocky for her own good junior firefighter she used to be before that entire mess started. "Pretty damn _fine_ song, if you ask me."

"Yeah." Apparently, her pretense worked. "Say… how are you, generally?" Or maybe it didn't.

So yeah, he'd made it sound casual, like a co-worker asking another in a throw-away line, the thing you don't expect a real answer to. Only she still knows him too well to overhear the underlying question, knows him well enough to know what he'd been thinking when he asked her that. For a moment, she considers answering honestly, telling him about the pain her leg is still giving her and the frustration of still not measuring up to her pre-incident self eating away at her and the fear of maybe never being allowed to get back on the job nearly paralyzing her at night.

But then she remembers that he's her _ex _and that he's her ex for a _reason_ and she just shrugs and says, "Doing fine," as if that answers everything.

She half hopes that he won't accept that but then again, even when they'd been sleeping with each other, he'd been wise enough not to press too hard whenever something had been eating at her, just as she'd been careful to refrain from poking and prodding too deep when she'd sensed that he was having a hard time about something. It just hadn't been that kind of relationship, and she'd been _happy_ with that. Until she hadn't been anymore, but that's a different story altogether.

As it is, in the end, he simply nods and walks over to the treadmill. He doesn't comment on the fact that "Death To My Hometown" just started again, just starts easing into his workout routine by setting out in a light trot, and it's kind of embarrassing how easily she can predict the next steps. Also how hard she suddenly finds it to stop throwing him little furtive looks because damn, he definitely didn't get any less hot in the last couple of months.

She'd always known that, of course, because they'd still encountered each other every damn shift – she _should_ have asked to be assigned another watch but then she'd have had to explain to Sheppard why she'd dumped Evan _after_ she'd been officially done with her candidacy and could have gotten a relationship waiver with no problems at all, and that hadn't exactly been something she'd wanted to do – but yeah, she'd been avoiding the weight room in the last seven months for a _reason_. For some reason, it's mostly easy to purposely overlook the fact that Evan Lorne never lost the edge that several years of serving in the military gave him – even if it _was_ the Air Force – when he's wearing station uniform or bunker gear but it's _positively_ impossible to do so when he's wearing workout clothes. Damn man manages to look sexy as hell in something as unremarkable as common shorts and t-shirts, and she doesn't even know _why_ that is.

Jesus fucking Christ, she needs to get the hell out of here.

For once actually listening to her sense of self-preservation, she gets up, wipes down the weight machine and plugs her iPod out of the station mid-song, not even taking care to look casual when she moves towards the exit. It almost works, right up until the point when she reaches the door and hears the treadmill stop behind her. She should just keep walking but in the end, the point of no return's been over and done the moment he walked in, hasn't it?

"Wanna know what I think, Laura?" She already does, that's the entire problem. She _knows_, which is why she isn't even surprised to hear him say that in an uncharacteristically low and kind of worried voice. "I think you're not doing fine. In fact, I think you're anything _but_ doing fine, and I dare you to look me in the eye and tell me I'm wrong."

There'd be no repercussions if she just walked out on him now, without even looking back. He wouldn't rat her out to Sheppard, and he most probably wouldn't even go back to going out of his way to avoid her, like he did in the last seven months. She could just leave and they'd probably never speak of this again, just keep on working their way back to being something akin to friends.

So really, there's no logical explanation whatsoever for her slowly turning around and taking a deep breath and preparing herself to lie to him full in his face.

And really, she'd have done it. She'd have gone through with it. If only her voice hadn't refused to cooperate. If only she'd been able to look him into the eye. If only she hadn't suddenly been only seeing blurry shapes of colors due to her eyes watering. _She would have lied to him and told him it was all bullshit if only her body would have let her_.

As it is, all her body lets her do is slump down against the nearest wall and give a small, embarrassing cry when her leg bends the wrong way for a moment and make herself as small as possible with pulling her legs towards her chest as close as possible and hugging her legs and putting her forehead down on her knees in a fight against breaking down in tears worth Custer's last stand at Little Big Horn.

And, of course, just as futile.

So yeah, she doesn't break down in an all out crying fest, with tears streaming down her cheeks in droves and her voice catching in big ugly sobs and her throat burning with anger and disappointment, like she did the first time of attempting her usual Sunday afternoon ten-miler after the incident. But the tears are still there, lurking in the back of her eyes, threatening to spill over any moment, and she's so wrapped up in trying to at least get some damage control done that she doesn't notice the quiet presence next to her at first.

It takes her another moment or two to snap out of it enough to realize that she's not the only one sitting on the weight room floor with her back to the wall anymore. He's sitting next to her, leaning against the wall, his legs outstretched on the ground, ankles crossed. On first glance, he looks completely at ease, if a little serious but you know, not like he's going to lose it any minute. Not like her.

He doesn't say anything, at least for the first few minutes and she wonders why the fuck he just did that. But then again, it's not the first time he does something like that; just sitting down next to her, all silent, just… waiting. Or maybe pondering, she really doesn't know. He has done it before, three or four times while they were having their casual not really casual sleeping with each other spending off-duty days with each other but not calling it a relationship thing, and he's done it again during the time she was laid up in the hospital.

Usually, he'd just ring her up, poke his head into her room to ask her how things were, give her a little update on things at the station whenever neither Teyla nor Jennifer could make it that day, but there was this one evening when he came in, still in his dirty bunker gear, dragging his step and sagging down heavily into the chair next to her bed. There'd been soot all over his face and he hadn't even take off the Nomex gloves, just buried his hand in his hands and sat there until she'd quietly asked, "Bad day, huh?" He'd nodded and in the end he _had_ told her about it, not much, really but it had been scary how easy it had been for her to understand that he was telling her about that old firefighter adage of "Sometimes, "I had a bad day at work" means "I almost didn't make it home"" having been true that day.

Okay, so their roles had actually been reversed that evening but the pattern's always the same. He'd silently wait with great patience until she lost hers – bastard knows she's not one to be patient to begin with – and he'd only speak once she made herself known. Almost as if… he was waiting for her to be ready to acknowledge his presence or something.

Only it's not going to happen today, that much she knows. She's not ready to tell anyone about how bad things really are, not even herself, honestly, and no amount of sitting next to her will change that. It's not that it's personal, it's never been that. It's that it taps too deeply into who she is, who she wanted to…"You know, I had something like that happen to me, too."

Huh?

She doesn't _want_ to react but damn, she has already looked up before she remembers that it should have been better not to acknowledge his presence but yeah, too late for that now. At least he's not even the least bit snug about getting her to react, just lightly touches the outside of his left leg. "Remember that scar? Yeah, that's its story, and don't tell me you never considered asking about it."

For two people just casually fucking each other once in a while when they weren't fighting fires or watching Sox games or beating up each other at playing pool, they sure do know each other way too well. Because he's _damn_ right. She _had_ been dying to ask him about it whenever she ran her hand along that long, ugly surgical scar all the way from his lower thigh to mid-calf. "Anyway, it was about ten years ago, when I was stationed at Eglin. Pretty nasty incident at the AAC involving unsafely stored ammunition, and, long story short, it got me three months of cooling my heels in a hospital bed and an only narrowly avoided medical board hearing."

Well… she'd always had a feeling there was some nasty story behind that scar, nastier than behind all of the other ones that always looked mostly like run of the mill firefighter's scars. Couple of healed over burn marks, mostly on his forearms, some old lacerations that pretty sure had needed stitches in his face and another smaller, barely visible surgical scar on his right wrist. She'd never asked after any of their stories, mostly because they were easy to read, anyway. And he'd never asked about any of _her_ scars, so.

So she probably owes him an answer. It's just that she feels a little tired, a little wrung out and she can't bring herself to say something flippant or just brush him off, like she usually would have and instead finds herself laying down her head, her right cheek touching her knees, softly asking, "Why three months?"

He gives a small humorless laugh and leans his head back against the wall, his eyes closed. Then he leans forward, rubs his hand through his hair and then along the back of his neck, shrugging. "Complications."

That's all he says and probably all he's gonna say on the matter, at all. It's okay, really. She can see that there was more to it, from the way he tries so very hard to make it look all casual but yeah, that's not where they stand right now. She goes for a different thing instead. "How'd you get over it?"

He gives her another shrug and one of those little jaw clenches that mean that he didn't especially like the question. Surprising how easy to read he's still to her. "Lots of hard work, and I mean _lots_ of hard work."

Of _course_ he'd say something like that. Would have been asked too much of him to go into any details or give her anything but a common place answer, and she's not even being sarcastic here. For a guy like Evan Lorne, for the situation they're currently in, it _would_ have been asked too much of him, or her for that matter. Which is why she's genuinely surprised when he adds, sounding anything but casual and very much serious, "Thing is: you gotta _talk_ to someone. I know I'm not the right one for the job, not right now, but you have Keller and you have Teyla. Don't do that Marine crap and try to be a stoic about it. Lord knows I tried that and trust me, it _didn't_ work."

Thing is: he's still doing it, and they both know it. _And_ it's not working. Because if he _weren't_ doing it, accidents in the line of duty were the _last_ thing they'd talk about right now. It's not about him, though, or about _them_, it's about _her_, and that's bad enough. Because she wishes so hard she _could_ be all Marine about it right now. Instead, all she can do is put her forehead on her knees and rasp, "It's all I am, Blues. _All I've ever been_."

He's quiet, at first, and she thinks she probably asked too much of him this time, swamping him with emotion they'd always carefully tried to keep out of their _thing_ but in the end, she hears him quietly tell her, "I know, Laura. I know." She knows he's gonna tell her now that it's everything _all_ of them have ever been, that thing they do. But that's bullshit because fighting fires and rescuing people really _is_ the one thing she is and… "Right that moment you walked into the station's garage for the first time, I knew that. God, you should have seen yourself…"

"Don't." Before she knows it, it's out. It's rude and out of place in that weird limbo of not really knowing what to do with each other they're currently in but he's right. He's not the right person for her to talk about everything concerning her injury and her failure to bounce right back. There's too much other stuff, too much emotional sandpaper rubbing the tender skin of that failed relationship raw again for her to be able to talk about something so essential with him.

She also wouldn't be surprised if he's angry with her or maybe disappointed. Hurt, of course. He'd have every right to it, just like he had every right to be hurt and angered by the way she dumped him, she never denied that. She _expects_ him to be angry and hurt. Which is why it doesn't in the least surprise her to hear him get up next to her. What does startle her is to hear him say, "Now you gonna be sitting around here all day or do some hard work, after all, Mo?"

Well. For a moment, she only dumbly looks up from her position on the ground, all the way to his outstretched hand first and then his slightly mockingly raised eyebrow and she can't help but roll her eyes. "Really? _That's_ the best drill instructor you can do?"

It makes him crack a grin, one of those rare ones full of cockiness and bravado that she knows he's fully capable of but almost never shows. He used to say that ever since she came to the fire house, they've got enough of that going around to outfit an entire battalion. "Watch me, Molly Marine."

"In your dreams, Air Force," she retorts, finally grabbing that hand and letting him haul her up, "in your dreams."

So… wait, why did he just reduce the weight on the machine she was working on when he came in? What does he think, doing that? Does he really think she can't… "Less weight, more repetitions. Trust me, Mo." Right. Uh-huh. She nearly asks him when exactly he acquired that qualification as a physical therapist but then again, big long surgical scar from a compound fracture and three months in a hospital bed and still avoided a medical board hearing. "And yes, you may hear that damn song again." She's pretty sure she should be replying something to that, maybe reiterate how it's a really _good_ song and… "_Once_. You may listen to it _one more time_."

Shit. She _really_ should tell him where to stick that "order" but in the end, she just throws him her iPod, torn between satisfaction and horror when she catches him so off-guard that he nearly misses to fish it out the air and sits down sticking out her tongue while he plugs it back in to the stereo, Springsteen immediately blasting through the room again, going all, "But sure as the hand of God, they brought death to my hometown". He just rolls his eyes and walks back to the treadmill and she starts pushing up that weight and that's the moment in which she realizes that she hasn't felt so light and optimistic as right now in a very long time.

So yeah, technically, she shouldn't be here. But technically can really bite her ass because honestly, this weight room, right now, with exactly that company is the one place she _needs_ to be in this very moment. She knows she'll have to deal with all the implications and unspoken issues at some point but right now, being here gives her the edge that she needs and she'll be forever grateful for that. One day, far into the future, she might even tell him so. Stranger things have happened. Right?


	3. All the Boys You Sent Away

**A/N: **Honestly? I loved writing this one. I have a thing for late night conversations and for slow dancing, and I guess it was only a question of time until I go and combine the two, yet again. Also, this was supposed to be the last part in the firefighters!AU but then _things_ (namely: bunnies) happened and it became a four parter and then _other_ things happened and yeah no, for the time being, this is going to stay a four parter. But yeah, one day far in the future, I might tell **mackenziesmomma** to release that Ronon/Keller bunny that assaulted me two nights ago and you'll get that one, too. Anyway. Here you go!

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**All the Boys You Sent Away**

"_And I know you're lonely  
For words that I ain't spoken  
But tonight we'll be free  
All the promises'll be broken  
There were ghosts in the eyes  
Of all the boys you sent away"_

_Bruce Springsteen, "Thunder Road"_

It's a slow night. Hard to believe, after weeks of people apparently having gone off the rails or finally lost all resemblance of common sense in the station's neighborhood. But there hasn't been a call tonight since a simple fender bender at West Euclid and 26th they didn't even need to get out the heavy equipment for about three hours ago, so the entire house is finally starting to let themselves relax a little. He uses it to catch up on paperwork that doesn't need any catching up in truth.

The alternative would be sitting in the common room and have everyone trying to gauge how things are currently between Laura and him. It's no alternative at all.

So. Paperwork it is. Sure, he could just pack up his incident reports from the last four weeks and put them on Sheppard's desk, post-it on it saying "Would have put your signature on them, too, if that wouldn't get me thrown into jail", his usual none too subtle reminder for Sheppard to do his own damn paperwork. Shep's been his captain for four years, former Air Force himself, and he's near ready putting all his money on "never turning in his paperwork on time just out of spite" as the mysterious reason why a helo pilot would have to completely retrain after being thrown out of the Air Force. Must have been something big that got him discredited so thoroughly that he placed his chances of ever finding a job flying rotary wing or any other aircraft below zero and went in a completely new direction. The Air Force _is_ that anal about turning in your reports on time.

Anyway, he could have just done that and gone to bed, or maybe go into the kitchen, see if there's any of that stew left that Laura and Keller prepared, never quite getting rid of the habit of cooking for the rest of the watch, despite neither of them being a rookie anymore. He could have done that, and he opted for paperwork. Maybe his sister was right every time she called him an idiot when they were kids. Still does, occasionally, come to think of it.

Wait, where was… "And people keep asking me why I won't even consider taking the lieutenant test at some unspecified day in the far off future."

"Huh?" Damn. It's out before he can get his surprise under wraps, and it makes him sound exactly like the idiot his sister still thinks he is sometimes.

Laura just grins and gestures into the general direction of his desk with her chin. "All that paperwork. Would just about kill me."

She's standing in his doorway, leaning against the jamb with her shoulder, legs crossed at the ankles, arms crossed in front of her chest. Weirdly enough, she still looks more relaxed than he has seen her in a long time. Been a week since she finally got back on duty, and he's glad that it's obviously doing her good. He's not sure if he could have taken even one more day of all that frustrated, nervous energy wafting off her whenever he met her. He'd really tried telling himself that there's no reason that it's affecting _him_ if she can't get back on duty, do what she loves, what she _is_, but yeah, it was. Badly.

He leans back and something surprising leaves his mouth before he can think better of it. "You'd make a good one, though." It's her turn to give him a "Huh?" look and he feels himself compelled to add, "Lieutenant, I mean. You'd make a pretty decent lieutenant."

Now she rolls her eyes and gives him a deadpan expression. "Good or pretty decent? Make up your mind, Air Force."

Yeah, well. He probably _should_ discipline her for that or at least give her a warning but then again, it's not like she's completely wrong. Also, he does understand her way of trying to deflect praise because it embarrasses her without being too obvious about it. He grimaces. "You know what I mean."

He half expects her to stick out her tongue or something because she never believed in that whole "You're in your late twenties, not a teenager anymore. Act your age." thing but in the end, she just rolls her eyes and then gestures towards the papers on his desk again. "So, anything exciting in there?"

Sadly, no. Maybe that was why he opted for paperwork in the first place. He shakes his head. "Nope. Just run-of-the-mill incident reports."

She nods and for a moment it looks like she's going to give him the old "well then, I gotta go do stuff" spiel and leave but then something _really_ weird happens. Right out of the blue, he hears her say, "I used to be married."

It takes him at least a minute or so to come up with an answer, and because he's still in somewhat of a daze after _that_ confession, it's only a meager and slightly confused, "What?"

Her first answer is to shrug and hunch her shoulders and stick her hands in the pockets of her uniform trousers. Her second is, "I used to be married," sounding like she's trying really hard to keep sounding casual, "Got divorced four years ago." Actually, she isn't doing too bad on the whole casual thing. Well, all until the next sentence. "And to be honest, I have no idea why I'm telling you this. I think I should just…"

He should let her leave. Should let her keep what's left of her dignity because that sudden admission clearly confused her at least as much as it confused him. And yet that's not what he does, instead asks, his voice way too quiet for his taste, "Why didn't you? Tell me, I mean."

She nearly leaves anyway, he can see that in her entire posture, like a cornered animal torn between fight or flight. But then she just shrugs and rubs her neck and it tells him everything he needs to know. "I don't know. It just… never came up, did it?"

Strangely enough, she is right. In the eight months they were not-really-together together, they never really talked about any ex-partners. To be honest, they didn't talk much at all. Not about the stuff that mattered, anyway. He takes a deep breath before saying, "If you mean I could have asked…"

"No, oh God, that wasn't what I was insinuating, I just…"

"…you're right." That kind of surprised himself as well. Mostly because it's the truth. Of course she could, maybe even should have told him about something as important as a divorce but it's not that he never asked because he never had the opportunity. Never asking about ex-partners was a deliberate choice he – both of them, really – made and he's slowly starting to realize that maybe it wasn't really a _good_ choice.

She blinks and needs a moment to come up with an answer. "What?"

It's his turn to shrug, try to cover up the embarrassment about having to admit that maybe he wasn't exactly without fault concerning the break-up, either. "I could have asked. I never did."

Slowly, she shakes her head. "No. We never… talked about that kind of stuff."

"No." He's starting to think they should have. He's starting to think that they should have talked about a _lot_ of things, not just ex-partners. He's starting to think that maybe that could have spared them a lot of pain and heartbreak. He makes another conscious choice, right here, right now. One he should have made a long time ago. "You want to talk about it now?"

She still looks uncomfortable, all hunched shoulders and still kind of ready to bolt at any moment, so it surprises him a little when she says, "Not really but I got nothing else to do. You?"

"Only this." He gestures to the paper on his desk, shrugging.

It makes her, of all things, _grin_ and then apparently accept her fate because most of the nervousness and tension seems to leak out of her. Probably leaving her feeling a little tired. Maybe he should tell her to go to… "Meaning you're bored to death." Weird how, despite never really talking about the important stuff, the deep stuff, they still know each other scarily well. He _was_ bored to death, and she's probably the only one who ever caught on to paperwork more often than not being a kind of excuse to closet himself away and get some peace and quiet in this ever busy station instead of some kind of hobby, like the rest of the station probably still thinks. She changes her posture once more, standing up a little straighter, squaring her shoulders, as if she's about to walk into battle. "Alright. Come on, ask me. Anything you want, free for all, only tonight."

So. She must have made a conscious choice, too, then. He takes a moment to consider what to ask her, how to go about it, how careful he wants to tread, but in the end, he moves around a little, hopes she recognizes the invitation to come in and sit down on his bed for what it is. He goes for the most obvious question. "Who was he?"

She takes her time but in the end, moves away from the door and sits down on his bed, like he invited her to. She doesn't do it like she used to, flopping down smack dab in the middle, like she owned it but instead goes for sitting down at the edge, a little awkwardly with one of her legs on the bed and the other dangling down. Still not fully at ease with being back in his office. He pretends he's not at least a little hurt by that.

When she made herself at least semi-comfortable, she answers his question. "Rodney McKay. Canadian. Professor at the college I got my degree from. Thought he was God's gift to science." She doesn't look at him, her face changing from casual to a little grin and he tries not to feel jealous of her ex-husband. It does help that the next thing she does is grimace and roll her eyes, adding, "Bit of a jerk, actually."

It doesn't really surprise him. It's not that he thinks that Laura likes to go for assholes who treat her like shit – because she doesn't, never would – just that she seems to like guys who challenge her, who can stand up to her whirlwind personality and her slightly volatile temper. He kind of hopes at least that's what she saw in _him_. And of course he just has to ask, "Is that why you got divorced?"

At that, she shakes her head, still not looking at him, just in the general direction of his office window, frowning. "No, we just… it just didn't work out." His gaze falls on her hands, and he sees those long, slender fingers with the calluses people stupidly keep being surprised by fiddling with the hem of the trouser leg that's up on the bed. "It was just… Well. All water under the bridge now, anyway."

There's more to it, clearly but really, even if she really means it and tonight will be the only time she's ever going to talk about it, he's not going to push it. That new thing that they have, with the oh so slow process of re-getting to know each other, is too precious to him to jeopardize it just to satisfy his curiosity. He leans forward, his elbow on his knees and carefully says, "Four years is a long time."

She nods, obviously trying to stop with the fiddling and not fully succeeding. But at least she looks at him again. "Yeah."

He considers releasing her, changing the topic like they used to do whenever things seemed to get too personal when they were still sleeping with each other but then again, that was probably what got them in this mess in the first place, so he instead says gently, "You still talk to each other?"

"Yeah." That does surprise him and yeah, it's not like he isn't a least a little bit jealous but then again, an ex-husband is an _ex_-husband for a good reason, just like ex-_boyfriends_ are what they are for a reason. "It wasn't a messy divorce or anything, we just don't have much in common is all." Was that what got between them, too? That they don't have much in common? He wishes he wouldn't circle back to those terrible two or three months after she dumped him when he kept wrecking his head about it maybe having been something he said or did but yeah, for a very short moment, it's all back. He's almost grateful that she keeps talking, adds, "I mean, he still thinks I'm wasting my "potential" here, and I still think that grad school would drive me crazy, so. You know."

He's pretty sure it wasn't just that but yeah, given what he knows about her – how she considers firefighting the one thing she _is_, and how not knowing whether she could go back to it nearly destroyed her and how, let's be honest, just plain good she is at it when she isn't falling through ceilings due to no fault of her own – he doesn't doubt that repeatedly being told that she was wasting her potential was a major turn-off. He nods. "Yeah."

There is, unfortunately, silence between them yet again and unfortunately, it's turning into awkward again, too and that's why he nearly bursts out laughing when the radio he'd had playing on low volume in the background suddenly goes all, "She'll let you in her house, if you come knockin' late at night." It would be an exaggeration if he said that lately, every time something important between them happened, Springsteen was there, too, like some kind of specter to remind them of something but yeah, lately, Springsteen seems to be fucking _everywhere_. Especially everywhere he meets Laura.

He nearly moves to shut off the damn radio but then he hears her say quietly, "I always liked that song."

It makes him turn back to her, raise his eyebrow. "Secret Garden?"

She shrugs, looking a little embarrassed. "Yeah. Always kinda wanted to dance to it at my wedding." That's… new to him. He knew that she liked Springsteen, of course he knew that. But he always thought it where the pounding rock numbers, the loud, accusing, make a stand pieces like "Murder Incorporated" and "Death To My Hometown" she liked, and stuff like "Born In The USA" that you can sing along to at the top of your voice. The ballads? Not so much. "Only, you know, I never got to."

His first thought is that well, "Secret Garden" isn't exactly a wedding dance song in the first place, and maybe Rodney "God's Gift to Science" McKay didn't like it as much as she did but then something else comes to his mind. "No wedding dance?"

"Nope." She tries so very hard not to sound regretful about that. So hard that he's pretty sure she did want a wedding dance; a real one, with everyone watching and her new husband leading her across the dance floor and whispering jokes about the audience to her and making her laugh. The one he'd have given her, if he had had the chance.

Good thing she's still concentrating too hard on trying to look like she never really cared for a wedding dance because whoa, that last thought. That was bad. _Really_ bad. Feeling like someone twisted a knife around in his guts a few times bad. "Just a quick courtroom wedding, and then it was back to pack lists and updating my will. One of those "I'm getting deployed, and I want to put you on my next of kin list" things. You know how that goes."

He does. Nearly had one of those himself before his last deployment. Good thing they reconsidered because it wouldn't have worked out, either. He knows two or three guys where it did but it really wouldn't have for him. Not with that girl, and it's good they never went through with it. She went on to marry a carpenter while he served in Bosnia, and he was the first one to congratulate her. Still sometimes talks to her.

And then he realizes something. It's weird, and it seems to be kind of out of the blue but well. It's as if some things click into place, now that he knows about the ex-husband and the courtroom deployment-induced wedding. About how it never worked out.

The one thing that never stopped confusing him was the question of why Laura would terminate their relationship when they were finally free to call it that. When they could well and truly be together without having to make it look like they weren't much more than friends with benefits, that there weren't real feelings involved. When that was probably exactly _why_ Laura dumped him when he was _just_ about to tell her that he wanted something real with her, something deep, something _official_. Because she didn't want it to become official. Because she was afraid that making it official would make it end.

Apparently, that divorce fucked her up more than she'd ever care to admit and he's tempted to tell her so, call her out on it, gently but firmly because that's not "having nothing in common with each other". That's not "irreconcilable differences". That's something they could actually _fix_, and oh God, does he still want to fix it so fucking bad.

But then Springsteen croons, "She'll let you into the parts of herself… that'll bring you down," and he decides that calling her out on it would be a really stupid thing to do. And instead does something that's probably even more stupid: he stands up, extending his hand towards her, raising his eyebrow in what he hopes she recognizes as a questioning manner.

Of course, she has to be all Laura Cadman about it, though, asking, "What?" in a slightly annoyed voice, just because she can.

Just because she's probably afraid of his answer. He's past the point of no return, though, probably has been ever since "Secret Garden" started to play, ever since he started helping her get back on her feet in the weight room, ever since he stood outside of her hospital room and tried not to care about her nearly having died that day. He's too far gone not to utter quietly, "I know it's not a wedding but that doesn't mean we can't dance."

She gets up, even takes a step towards him. Doesn't take his hand, though. "We never did. Dance with each other, I mean."

"No, we didn't." It's true, that. First annual first responder dance event after she came to the station, they were too worried about people reading too much into the tension between them to be seen together on the dance floor. Second time around, they couldn't even be in the same room with each other without everyone's conversations turning into whispered gossip and assumptions. He still hates to think back to that particular evening.

There's still Springsteen singing the song she wanted to dance to at her wedding on, though, and he's not in the mood to waste that opportunity. Which is probably why it comes out a little gruffer than he wanted when he asks her, "So, you game or not?"

He can see that she considers telling him no but at, "Into her secret garden, don't think twice," she takes that final step, takes his hand, lets him put the other one on her waist and gets so close to him that he can hear her whisper, "Just shut up and dance, Blues," as clear as if she'd have said it out loud.

And he does. Shuts up and leads her in a slow dance in his office, two sets of feet in work boots shuffling along the linoleum, her head on his shoulder because of course she's just the right height to be able to do that and his cheek against her hair because he couldn't resist doing it if his life depended on it.

He's about to close his eyes when he spots a figure across the dorm room. Big hulking Ronon Dex, just looking at him. Them. Nothing menacing or warning in his eyes and posture. Laura Cadman doesn't need or tolerate that kind of someone big brothering her and they both know it. Just a moment of a calculating gaze and then a nod because maybe Laura would never accept being patronized like that but Dex is still her lieutenant and LTs, the good ones, they look out for their people. He doesn't actually _need_ Dex's approval for anything but it's good to have it, anyway.

Even if this will never lead to anything.

It's not going to, he keeps telling himself while he holds her and dances with her to the song she always wanted to dance to at her wedding but right now, right here, that's not important, anyway. It's never going to lead to anything but he's gonna take that one little scrap he's been given and make the most of it, and from the way she's moving with him, he thinks he can tell that she's doing the same. That's all they can do, all they _need_ to do, and he's okay with that. So he just closes his eyes, in the end, and smiles. Paperwork can wait just a couple more minutes, anyway.


	4. Ain't Lookin' For Prayers Or Pity

**A/N: **Alright, this one was being a little bitch at times and I'm not sure if I nailed it but yeah, that is, so far, the final part and maybe I can finally concentrate on some of the other fics I still need to write and/or finish. As always, I'd love to hear what you think!

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**Ain't Lookin' For Prayers Or Pity**

"_Girl ain't no kindness in the face of strangers  
Ain't gonna find no miracles here  
Well you can wait on your blessings darlin'  
But I got a deal for you right here_

_I ain't lookin' for prayers or pity_  
_I ain't comin' 'round searchin' for a crutch_  
_I just want someone to talk to_  
_And a little of that human touch_  
_Just a little of that human touch."_

_Bruce Springsteen, "Human Touch"_

God, she hates Wisconsin.

No, okay, that's not true. Actually, she likes Wisconsin. Or at least doesn't mind it very much, not even in February. She's a Chicago native, so snow and temperatures in the double negatives at the end of winter don't surprise her much, nor do they bother her much. To be honest, whenever she was forced to spend time at Twentynine Palms – and yeah, both in Fallujah and at Leatherneck – she kind of found herself pining more than once for the Great Lakes in January.

Anyway. Back to Wisconsin. Milwaukee, especially. Corner of West Cleveland Avenue and 19th Street, right in the middle of an industrial park that is. Right now. It _is_ the middle of February, and temperatures really are in the double negatives today. So what would normal people do?

Get the hell out of the cold and inside a nicely heated house, maybe with a fire merrily crackling away in the fireplace and a dog sleeping by your feet or something, that's what they would do. Not standing around in the dark in bunker gear, that's for sure. And yet here they are, standing fire watch over the smoldering remains of what used to be a galvanization factory not three hours ago.

Damn, if it could just have been _anything_ but that damn factory. It's cold enough that they wouldn't need more than maybe two firefighters sitting watch comfortably and toasty warm in one of the vans for your average, garden-variety house fire but no, it _had_ to be a fucking hot dip galvanization factory going up in flames, with God knows what buried in the smoldering remains, ready to burst out in flames at the slightest contact with oxygen.

So yeah, no comfortable van for them. Instead, half of Engine 12's Second Watch placed at strategic corners of the building in full rig, minus SCBAs, waiting for the other half of the watch to relieve them in about an hour. About fucking time, too. At least she got the right partner for her little corner of the lot.

Or, it _would_ be the right partner if he were just a _little_ bit chattier. As it is, in the last hour since they got the fire under control, all Evan had done was skulk around, kick at debris here and there and aim the handheld infrared camera into the mass of the remains in irregular intervals. Definitely not his standard performance. Something's up with that man, and she intends to find out what the hell it is tonight.

The thing is: it's been going on for a while, that much she can tell. She's been back with the watch for five weeks now, and something's been eating at him for at least four of them. Gradually and slowly because she hadn't even realized it until maybe a week ago but yeah, the signs had been there before that. That night when she was still in hospital when he hadn't even changed out of his bunker gear before visiting her, deflecting things by concentrating on helping her getting back on her feet, closeting himself away in his quarters for longer and longer intervals… all there.

After their little dance performance, she'd thought that they might get closer again, in some way, opening up a little more but in the end it had only been skin deep. She'd thought that telling him about Rodney, as much as she _hadn't_ wanted to blurt that out, would change, you know… _something_ and it kinda had, at least that one evening but couple days after that? Something had started to feel off about him.

She'd considered talking to Jennifer about it, or maybe better Teyla because Teyla has known Evan for a hell lotta longer than almost anyone else at the fire station but something had kept her from doing it. Maybe she didn't want them to speculate about her sudden interest in the guy she dumped a little less than a year ago, maybe she hadn't wanted to put _anyone_ on the scent of what was probably nothing more than just a bit of funk.

Anyway, whatever it was, she didn't talk to them about _that_ – pretty magnificent feat, considering how they _both_ kept trying to grill her for whatever changed between Evan and her after waking up after surgery – and she didn't talk to anyone _else_ about it, either. She shortly considered giving Ronon a hint and make him talk to Evan, she even thought about giving _Sheppard_ a hint but yeah, _that_ definitely had felt like being a snitch and she'd never do something like that to Evan. She would break his heart to protect her own, yes, but she wouldn't do _that_.

So what's left short of dragging him into a dark corner at the fire house and beat it out of him?

Cornering him at a fire watch, that's what's left. She doesn't sigh but instead walks up to him, her plan for making him talk firmly in her head. Maybe shocking him into talking works a second time, too. She prepares to give her statement and… "I fucking hate Wisconsin."

Right.

Or they could use _that_ as a conversation starter. She grins beneath the scarf she wound around the lower half of her face. Not that he could see it but he knows her well enough to be able to hear it when she replies, "No, you don't."

"Sure do." Ah. There they go again. That kind of tone, bordering on petulant, isn't his usual way to answer something like that.

She gives keeping it light one more try. "Nah, that's just your Californian genes talking."

It makes him snort, at least that, but he doesn't reply anything, just keeps walking, his shoulders hunched over a little against the cold and his face just as heavily covered as hers. Scarf for the lower half, beanie and helmet for the upper half, leaving only the eyes exposed. Maybe he really does hate Wisconsin but at least his California beach boy genes didn't keep him from dressing according to the weather.

Unfortunately, his unwillingness to discuss his feelings regarding Wisconsin leaves her with her original plan. Which means taking a deep breath – actually, it doesn't mean _that_ because she kept trying to tell herself that being nonchalant about this was probably her best strategy – and saying, more or less right out of the blue, "Rodney's getting married again."

It's not a lie, that's the weirdest thing about it. Just two days after she told Evan about Rodney's mere existence, he calls her right out of the blue. Talks to her about a conference in Chicago he's been to, how he kept considering to ring her up but you know, time constraints, et cetera, et cetera and oh by the way, he proposed to his botanist girlfriend and she said yes.

His reply isn't exactly verbose, consisting only of, "Your ex-husband?"

She nods, walking alongside him, their feet crunching through the refrozen slush. "The very one."

He doesn't immediately reply at that, keeps crunching on and aiming the camera at the remains of the factory now and then. It's difficult to see even his eyes because of the shadow the helmet's throwing on his face. Damn. That didn't get her very far yet, did it?

It's hard to stay quiet, let him work it out for himself but for once, she manages to keep her impatient trap shut. And gets rewarded for it. "You okay with that?"

Jackpot, so to speak. That's _exactly_ what she was hoping for when she struck up that conversation. Good to know that Jennifer isn't the only one with an uncanny knack for instinctively finding the exact right thing to say, at least sometimes. She hunches her shoulders herself, hoping her lucky streak holds for at least a little while longer. "Yeah. There are worse things than that."

Again, she didn't even have to lie, and that's pretty much weird, too. She'd always been aware of the possibility that one of them or both would remarry at some point and for some weird reason she'd always thought Rodney would be the first, despite his obvious jerky, vain and God complex tendencies. And look where she's now. She doesn't mind it, though, really, she doesn't.

Evan doesn't seem to be so convinced of that, though. "Like what?"

Well, here it is, her one chance at getting to the bottom of it all. She stops. "Like you not talking to me. Or anyone else for that matter."

He doesn't stop immediately, keeps walking on two or three more steps before realizing that no, she's not coming. When he stops, he doesn't turn around, but she can see his shoulders move, as if he just sighed heavily. She expects him to tell her that there _is_ nothing to talk about or something equally characteristic of the strong, silent male stereotype so many firefighters apparently yearn to adhere to, which is why it really surprises her that he says, after finally turning around after all, "What do you want, Laura?" sounding kind of defeated and maybe a little annoyed, too.

Surprises her so much, actually, that she has to grope for words for a moment, doesn't really know what to reply so in the end, she has to leave it a slightly dumfounded, "What do you mean, what do I want?"

Again, he doesn't answer right away. Apparently, making him talk is going to be like pulling teeth. At least now she knows why they – with the sole exception of that one nightly conversation on professional distance four months into her candidacy – always carefully tried to skirt around everything deeper than day-to-day station gossip or baseball results.

In the end, his shoulders heave again and he runs a hand over his face, shaking his head. "Nothing, I just…" Yes? He just _what_? "Never mind. Come on, we gotta keep moving or our feet will freeze to the fucking ground or something."

Yep, there it is again. It was _clearly_ meant to be joking but it _clearly_ sounded just a tad too pissed off and frustrated to compare to his usual dry humor. And four weeks ago, he probably would have been able to pass it off as just being a little grumpy teasing. Now, though… no. It's gotta end right here because it's actually starting to get really irritating.

She shakes her head, a little mulishly making a point of not even lifting a finger. "Not until you tell me what the hell's going on with you." Damn. That came out way quieter and gentler than she'd intended to. Like she cared for him. _Really_ cared for him.

Which, God help her, she actually _does_.

Jesus fucking Christ, they're not even into an actual conversation, and it's already shaping up to be a royal clusterfuck.

To his credit, he doesn't try to bullshit himself out of this or gives her some "What are you even talking about?" crap when he finally reacts. Rather, she detects even more signs of frustration. That thing with rocking back on his feet once or twice, the nodding that was probably accompanied by his usual jaw clenching and maybe an eyeroll… yeah, it's all there, before he settles at, "Duty's just been a little rough for the last couple weeks is all."

Yeah. Well. _That's_ the understatement of the year. In the last couple weeks, Engine 12 had to cope with two of Evan's crew nearly getting caught in the literal crossfire between two rival gangs, several worse than usual house fires, three cases of suspected arson and, worse of all, just last week, a twelve year old boy having to sit next to his dead father for four hours in a crashed car because that's how long it took for someone to notice the wreck by the roadside and fucking call 911.

The thing is, though: it's not like those were the only bad four weeks they ever had. To tell the truth, most weeks are rather like that than that shift four weeks ago when she let him convince her to dance to that goddamn song with him. And ever since she came to the station, Evan Lorne was the one guy she looked up to because he always seemed to take it in stride.

Sure he got upset about things like them having to break down doors so the cops could get inside and stop a husband from beating his wife to death or having to cut kids out of totaled cars. They all did. But Evan, he always seemed to bounce right back, always kept doing his job with efficiency and skill, not letting negative emotions keep him down. Even Ronon, her LT, couldn't always manage to push it away after the shift was over. Evan, though…

Evan, though. Evan always seemed to be able to strip it away with stepping out of his bunker gear, wash it off in the shower, leave it behind him as soon as he left the station's premises. Evan always got to make his own words about not letting it get to you look so easy.

Apparently, it's not so easy, after all. She shakes her head. "Duty's always a little rough." She could let it end here, keep up the superficial pretense of talking about some deep stuff and leave it at that. But yeah. They've been doing that for far too long. And if she's learned anything ever since she woke up from surgery… well. She takes a deep breath. "What changed?"

She can _see_ that he's thinking the same thing; that he could just brush her off, give her something about nothing having changed at all, knowing full well that she'd probably take the hint and let it rest, despite all her resolutions of not doing that. She can see it in the way he hesitates, in the way he's about to turn around and just keep walking the perimeter before he moves his helmet a little back, so she can see his eyes glittering in the light of the floodlights they put up earlier. Hears it in his gruffer than usual voice when he mumbles, "Can't seem to shake it off. That's what changed."

Well. That was a remarkably straightforward answer, considering how much they've been beating around the bush until now. Not straightforward enough, though, so she decides to keep up provoking him, at least for a little while longer. "So? You're not the only one that ever happened to."

He shakes his head, frustration clearly visible in his slightly jerky movements. "So you don't understand." No. Well, yes, actually, she does. She just has a feeling that he needs to _say_ it, say it out loud so that _he_ understands it, too. "I've been doing this shit for fifteen years, and it never… I don't know anymore, Laura."

It's weird. She's been in more than one serious relationship, not just the one with Rodney but two or three others. Serious relationships with serious emotional investments, with men she cared for deeply; deeply enough that when those relationships ended, there was always some real heartbreak involved. But none, not even one of them, managed to break her heart the way that simple sentence, sounding so lost and confused, from a man she hasn't even been in a real relationship with just did.

Maybe she shouldn't have initiated this conversation, after all. Because now that she's in it, there's no way to get out of it, no way to tell him to shut up, no way to not hear him say, "I still keep seeing that kid next to his father while you cut him out of that car. Still keep hearing him begging Jennifer to tell him his dad's okay. That stuff… that never happened to me before."

He's not the only one. She still keeps hearing that kid, too, every night she goes to sleep, she hears him. She shouldn't even be able to, the sound of the heavy cutter eating its way through the car door droning everything else out. But she does. And she'd actually prefer _not_ to talk about it so it slips out before she can think better of it. "Happens to all of us." Not able to look at him, she stuffs her hands in her coat's pockets and starts walking again, telling herself it's because she doesn't want to have to deal with Jennifer and Teyla and frostbite.

He almost ferociously shakes his head while she trudges past him. "Yeah, but not to _me_."

Almost a little exasperated, she turns around to him and growls, "That's bullshit and you know it, Air Force."

In a little helpless gesture of rubbing his neck, he mutters, "Laura…" but trails off, never actually finishing the sentence.

She, however, suddenly finds herself having something of an epiphany. She almost dismissed the thought, but yeah, considering everything… it adds up. She stops and turns around again, this time fully facing him. "You know what? I think I know what this is about."

"Oh right, and what would _that_ be?" Ah, yeah, snarky sarcasm. She can deal with that.

Well, here goes nothing. "You're afraid you're losing your edge. You're afraid you're getting too old for this." She's pretty sure she hit the mark with that. He's thirty-five, still a heap of years away from average firefighter retirement age but getting close to that age when you start wondering for how long you can still stay in frontline firefighting, when you start wondering if you haven't used up all your luck and are now living on borrowed time. That age when you start wondering if you're really still alive due to experience or if it's just dumb luck that kept you alive for so long. That age when you stop feeling invincible and instead start wondering when your luck will finally run out.

She thinks she can see all that running through his head, in that minute or so when he hesitates answering her. Maybe she's imagining it, sure but yeah, she's pretty sure that in that moment, something like that's running through his head. His final reply does nothing to convince her of the opposite, even if it's just getting back to moving and grumbling, "Nice try, Dr. Freud."

Her only answer is falling in step with him and shrugging. "Just telling it like it is."

There's silence from him again, the only sound their feet crunching frozen slush underneath their boots and the fabric of their bunker gear rustling and swishing with every move. So it's a little startling when he suddenly says, sounding even a little petulant, "I'm _not_ getting too old for this."

She nearly laughs out loud at that, just the way he said that, as if the person he needs to convince most is _himself_, as if he feels affronted by the mere suggestion that he might get too old for a job he feels is his one calling in life. Just like she feels about the job, which is why, in the end, she doesn't laugh but explains to him, "I never said you were. I just said you're afraid that it's happening to you right now." Honestly, he can try to deny it all he wants but that _is_ exactly what's going on here. And because she cares about him, way more than she should, she feels herself compelled to add, "And here's the thing: you _aren't_ getting too old for it. It just turned out that, apparently, you're human, after all, just like the rest of us."

Of course, it can't end here, that much is clear from how this conversation went but to be honest, everything going past that is something that he should talk about with one of the department's shrinks or maybe the chaplain, not with her. She nearly moves to suggest that to him but then she hears him utter a somewhat mollified, "Thanks. I guess," and decides that that's a conversation for another day. And maybe they won't even need _that_ conversation because he figured that out on his own, after all. He's smart enough for that.

She smiles beneath her scarf. "You're welcome."

After that, they keep walking along the remains of the factory, in something like companionable silence and she's glad that apparently, some of that tension and nervousness seem to have left him and harbors the slight hope that maybe they can go back to light teasing and carefully not mentioning that dance from four weeks ago, like they used to.

He, of course, seems to have different ideas, though, because after a couple of yards walking in silence, he suddenly stops again, going, "You know what's the worst, though?" and completely throwing her off with what he says next, "I just… I _know_ I should let you go but _I still miss you, Laura_." That wasn't… She never expected him to say _that_? To say it with so much conviction and even… desperation? It comes so out of the blue, shocks her so deeply that all she can do is stop, too and turn towards him and stay there rooted to her spot, listening to him. "Every single day. And I keep wondering what I did wrong, what I could have done better…"

"Don't, Evan." She didn't want to say that. Not that and not _like_ that. She nearly sounded like she was _choking_, for God's sake.

Unfortunately, that didn't do anything against the floodgates that must have opened in his head, though. "Look, I _know_ I'm being out of line here." He's… Yeah, okay, he kinda is, but that's not her problem. It's what comes after that. "I'm… I'm sorry for that and I know I should let this lie and stop picking at it but I…"

It's him _apologizing_ for still missing her, when he should be pissed off at still missing that woman who dumped him. Yeah. That's what he should be. That's what she could have dealt with easily. Anger and irritation. Being _sorry_? Not so much. She swallows. "No, Evan. It's not that. It's not you, it's…"

"Oh _please_, Laura, don't even think about trying to give me that crap…" _There_. _That's_ what she expected.

What she can deal with. She shakes her head ferociously, almost glad that she gets a chance to explain her reasoning. "No, it's literally me!" Okay, that hadn't been supposed to come out as desperate as that. And okay, it also hadn't been supposed to be worded like _that_ because that was the one thing she _didn't_ want to tell him about when she ended their not-relationship. But apparently, telling him about Rodney did something to her, too, and now it's in for a penny, in for a pound. "It's… I just… I knew I'd mess up, eventually."

Because that's what it always comes down to it, isn't it? She likes a guy, she starts getting serious with him, she ends up divorced because it doesn't work out, never would have worked out and she should have seen that one coming from a hundred miles away.

Somehow, her throat seems to get curiously tight but something keeps her talking, stupidly. Goddammit. "I just… I wanted to stop it before either of us got too involved, and since you kept saying that getting involved too much with anything or anyone was the worst thing a firefighter could do…"

"I'm sorry." So. That's not exactly what she'd expected what he'd say to that, especially in such a quiet, genuinely apologetic voice.

She shakes her head, not able to deal with an _apology_ of all things right now. "No, don't be. It's not like you were completely wrong." She sees that now, _really_ sees what he meant to tell her in that night after they lost that kid four months into her candidacy. Sees that her biggest mistake always was putting too much heart into things and people that didn't have a future and…

"I wasn't completely right either, though." She'd never have thought that she'd hear him saying something like that, not after he'd been so adamant about teaching her to keep her distance, so adamant that she'd used it as the reason to end their not-relationship. So adamant that she'd thought she needed to end it because she thought he'd been keeping his distance from _her_ and she'd thought she couldn't deal with that in the long run.

Turns out things are even _more_ fucked up than that. She kind of feels herself deflate, grasping at straws while telling him weakly, "I just… didn't want to get anyone hurt again."

She sees him shake his head, sees something like pity in his eyes and hopes she imagined it, and then he says, quietly and actually _without_ any pity, just weird sadness in his voice, "That divorce really messed you up, didn't it?"

Her first instinct is to tell him that that's bullshit, that she's been over the divorce as soon as she signed all relevant papers because that's how she _felt_ for four goddamn years but then a little voice in her head reminds her off the small stab of envy she felt in her heart when Rodney told her about getting married again. It's not that she still has feelings for Rodney, at least no romantic ones, and that _is_ the truth but sometimes, late at night when she can't sleep, she finds herself fending off traitorous thoughts telling her that the divorce was her fault, and her fault alone, and that in the end, _all_ her failed relationships were her fault, and that this inability, whatever it is, to keep a relationship stable and running lost her the man she really, really wanted to keep forever, deep down in her heart. The man now standing opposite hers in bunker gear and steel-toed boots. She swallows something that tastes like sobs. "I…"

"Shit, Laura, I'm sorry for that" And why would he say _that_, if it was the _truth_? "That was uncalled for, and I just… I really shouldn't have said that."

Well. Maybe it's the way he apologized yet again, maybe it's that he managed to find out something even she hadn't known about herself but all she can do is take a deep breath and finally own up to it. "That doesn't make it any less true, though."

He's silent after that, apparently as shocked by her admission as she is and something tells her that she _should_ just turn around and walk away, but suddenly, she can't. Could be that they've been out here freezing their asses off for hours, could be that she's just plain dead tired but walking away seems absolutely impossible to her. There's something else she needs to do. "Blues?"

"What?" She's kind of glad that he sounds only weary, no irritation or suspicion at all. Just that same tiredness that seems to be creeping into her bones.

Because it makes it a lot easier to say what she needs to tell him now. "I miss you every single day, too."

God, she'd been trying so hard to tell herself that she was done with him, that dumping him was best for both of them that for a while, she'd even believed it. And it had been easy, as long as she hadn't had to see him or be in the same room with him. Which meant that the only days she _didn't_ miss him had been her days off, away from the station and since she'd been pulling a lot of doubles immediately after the end of her candidacy to get the hang of working on a HURT squad, those days had been few and far between.

So yes, she's been trying to deceive herself for _months_, and it had never even worked. She'd _always_ missed him, had _always_ wanted to walk up to him and tell him that she was sorry and ask him to try again, only to remember what usually happened when she got in a serious relationship with a guy and how she _didn't_ want that to happen to a relationship with _that_ guy. Had _always_ felt like a goddamn _idiot_ for ending it, anyway.

So she nearly socks him in his jaw when his final reaction is actually _laughing_ – albeit only a short, humorless chuckle – at her and snorting and telling her, "We sure are two fucked up individuals, Mo."

But then again, he's _right_, isn't he, about the two of them? _He_ doubts that he can still cut it after fifteen years, and _she_ thinks she doesn't deserve a relationship because she seems to run them into the ground at some point, anyway, and they miss each other so very bad that they needed almost a year of finally admitting it to each other. "Fucked up" doesn't even _begin_ to adequately describe it.

Her next step is, to be honest, not based on careful consideration at all. It's pure instinct and need and so not like that tough firefighter chick image she'd worked hard to construct and fulfill but yeah, fuck that, just for a moment _fuck that_, and she steps up to him and throws her arms around him.

For one terrible moment, he stands there, motionless and she nearly lets go of him to _finally_ and truly walk away from it. But then, suddenly, she feels him move, feels him put his arms around her, bulky bunker gear making his movements a little clumsy but man, even through all those layers of gear, she can still feel the fierceness of his embrace. He hugs her like he needs it as much as she does, like he never wants to let her go again. That, more than anything, even more than that dance four weeks ago, tells her all she needs to know and she genuinely would sob with relief and hope if it weren't so damn cold and there wasn't the real danger of her tears freezing in her eyelashes.

So instead she goes for breathless, a little hysterical laughter, and he joins her and things would really be fucking perfect right now, if there weren't the sudden telltale sound of a muffled explosion and one of Evan's crew on the radio, frantically calling for support in his corner of the property.

In the end, it takes them another hour and the help of their replacements to get the fire back under control and after that she's so exhausted that all she can do is concentrate on getting back into the truck and keep herself awake long enough not to fall asleep in the shower. She doesn't even make it to the dorm, stopping at the couch in the common room because she honestly _couldn't_ have walked just _one_ more step.

She curls up on the couch, just when the ever running TV plays the first notes of "The River" and Springsteen starts to sing, "I come from down in the valley," and about a shotgun marriage failing and she even lacks the energy to shut that damn song that she found herself hating ever since she and Rodney decided to get divorced off. Really goddamn hate that song, swear to God… "Want me to shut it off?" Huh? "The TV, Laura. Want me to switch it off?"

Did she say that thing about hating "The River" out loud? She opens her eyes, squints at the source of the voice and thinks that he looks even more tired than she feels. She closes her eyes again. "Whatever."

That makes him chuckle again, this time with a certain… fondness to it? Yeah well, _whatever_, she's too tired to contemplate that now, and really, all she wants is to be left alone and sleep off the exhaustion and the cold for at least a few more hours. So she doesn't even move when she feels a blanket drawn over her while Springsteen keeps going on, "No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle, no flowers, no wedding dress," and she nearly regrets not just nodding when Evan asked her… oh.

Huh. That's his fresh out of the shower smell, right there, right next to her and she doesn't even think, just makes the herculean effort to move her arm to cover his waist, hand shoved beneath his uniform shirt to touch skin still slightly damp, like she used to do before everything went down the drain, and it feels so right, so good, so much like what Springsteen means when he sings, "At night on them banks I'd lie awake and pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take," when she feels an arm draped around her shoulders, pulling her closer to that body she got to know so intimately well.

Maybe she doesn't hate "The River" that much, after all.

She smiles. It's the last thing she does before falling asleep in that cocoon of blanket and arms and body because that's the best thing that has happened to her in a long time. So they didn't kiss or declare their undying love for each other or some other crap like that but honestly, no one needs that, anyway. Not when she has just been handed a chance at putting something to right she didn't even think she deserved.

So she smiles and hugs him just a little bit closer and just for those precious few hours until their shift is over, all is right in the world. So you know, fuck being normal. Fuck the merry fire in the fireplace and the dog by your feet. At least for tonight, she can imagine nothing better than sitting on that ratty old couch in the common room with a firefighter just as messed up as she is and yeah, everything else, they can still figure out tomorrow. Thank God for tomorrow.


End file.
